Hi everybody … Good news! Aven Colony build 0.1.14014 is now posted. We apologize for the delayed update; we’d wanted to post an update several weeks ago but were stalled by a critical bug fix from one our our middleware providers.

Installation instructions are available here. If you’re an itch.io customer and experience issues launching the game, please be sure to read the notes on disabling sandbox mode!

Since it’s been a month since our last update, we have a lot more changes than usual! Besides a ton of bug fixes, we’ve added a ton of new features to the game, most notably:

Plague Spores. These deadly biological spores slowly float toward the colony and get sucked into the coloy through Intake Fans (or Geothermal Generators or any other building type). They then split into numerous smaller “microbes” that rapidly spread through the colony’s tunnel system, infecting any colonists they see! You will need Hospitals to stop the spread of the plague if this happens.

Lightning Towers. A Lightning Tower can fully defend part of your colony from the lightning strikes (“thundersnow“) that frequently strike during Aven Prime’s winter season, and will channel the electricity into any Energy Batteries connected to the same power zone.

Additionally, please note that our forums have been down for a few weeks due to spam. We apologize for the inconvenience and expect to have them back online within a few days.

Here are the full update notes:

New Features:

Added a Plague Spore that can enter the colony, split into tiny microbes, and infect colonists with the plague!

Added a new Plasma Turret that can shoot down Creep Spores and Plague Spores, and even shoot down Shard Storm shards!

Added a new defensive Lightning Tower! This protects the surrounding area from lightning strikes in winter and also feeds the electricity back into any Energy Batteries in the colony

Lots of new, more specialized voice-overs from the 5 main characters; also changed the assignments of who gives some of the various quests during the missions

Tons of additional ambient colonist voice-overs

Replaced voice-overs for the male colonist who sounded like a redneck and the female who sounded like Kalandra

A new alien dragonfly now wanders around Vanaar and Hyla’s Crescent during non-winter seasons

Added a new SHIPE call from Commissioner Veronika near the start of Vanaar to remind you that following the mission objectives is optional

The “Consumable” row on the inventory dialog now shows up in red if no food types are marked as consumable

Big improvements to line-drawing in the Stats panel; also made the panel much taller

Rewards from Veronika now grey out you don’t have room for them

There’s also an ‘X’ button in the upper-right of this dialog to close it if all options are greyed (this is available for the mission objectives, too)

Added new data types to the Statistics dialog: immigrants accepted and food/water/storage/electricity per colonist

Added flashing lights that light up the surrounding area for landing and descending immigration and trade vessels

Added an urgent notification when there’s a high crime level in part of the colony

You can now use Ctrl-Alt-X to temporarily disable the UI (for taking screenshots — use PrtScrn if playing via itch.io or F12 if playing via the Steam closed beta)

The Mini-Storage building now animates as it was always intended to

Bug fixes:

Tunnels under construction (and other buildings!) are now FAR more visible against the snowy background on arctic maps

Fixed bug where Police Drone Stations that lost power would remove their positive effects much too quickly, which make “death spirals” happen much too quickly under certain circumstances

itch.io public beta participants: download the latest version via the web and unzip on top of your current install — or, if using the launcher, make sure you’re using the latest version of the itch.io launcher (18.7.0 or later) and reinstall the game. Again, the beta is available here.

If you experience issues launching the game via the itch.io app, please open the itch.io app and click on the “Preferences” option and make sure that “Enable itch.io sandbox” is unchecked, as shown below. The game should then launch!

If you used the itch.io client to extract the game and you’re having problems loading the game or are otherwise unable to get to the main menu, please try the following:Hit Win+R (to open the “Run” box) and then paste the following into that box:

%appdata%\itch\apps\Aven Colony Beta\Engine\Extras\Redist\en-us\

If you downloaded it as a ZIP, navigate into the directory you extracted it, and then go into Engine\Extras\Redist\en-us .

In that folder you should see an executable named UE4PrereqSetup_x64. If you run that, that will install everything that the game needs – and you should then be able to run the game without issues!

Steam closed beta participants (limited to media, streamers, YouTubers, and early beta participants from the closed beta prior to September): just exit Steam and restart to get the latest. Please keep an eye out for further updates; we’re laser focused on bug fixes and have several more coming down the pipe in the very near future.

Aven Colony Master Fixes List

(thanks to user Satoru for posting these!)

Save Game Problems

The latest patch may be causing issues with saving and loading your game. If you are encountering this issue then please try the following fix:

1. Open the itch.io app
2. At the bottom left is a button that has your username on it
3. Click that, then click “Preferences” in the menu that appears
4. Please UNCHECK “Enable itch.io sandbox” in the window that appears

Update Your Video Card Drivers

This is the next most common cause for people’s inability to run the game, particularly on PC.

First check your driver version using this method and make sure your drivers are recent:

For AMD cards, download the AMD Catalyst Control Center, which you can find here:

Make sure you get 3 updates from Windows Update after installing the Windows Media Framework – KB30100801, KB3099229 and KB3133719. If you’ve taken the above step, just running Windows Update should fix it.

Nothing Works! Help!

As the game is in alpha many many thing will likely go horribly wrong (just like on your colony!). To assist the devs in solving your issue as quickly as possible, please ensure you’ve tried all the steps above. Once you have you should create a new post outlining your issue. Please be absolutely verbose as possible. “Everything is broken” isn’t going to help the devs get your issue resolved. But something like “During a lightning storm I clicked on a farm and an alien came through my screen and punched me!” (file that under ‘non critical issue’…) is great. Make sure you put in your system specifications like

Operating System

Video Card Type

CPU Type

If you have a save game where your bug is consistently repeatable, please attach that to the post here. Your save games are here: